Australia needs to sacrifice cows and sheep for Paris too

Everyone is talking about the NEG (National Energy Guarantee) which will supposedly attain the mythical trifecta of cheap, reliable, and planet cooling electricity. In terms of meeting our Paris “commitment” Tom Quirk wondered how we are doing in other sectors, like farms, cars, rubbish — and whether we had cut emissions there. Well, ho, ho, here’s that report. Thank you, Tom. Looks like a lot of cows and sheep will have to go. Still, we want to stop storms don’t we?

Key points:

The NEG is not enough on its own to reduce Australian emissions from 608Mt to 444Mt.

Most of our reductions so far have come from just two sectors: the electricity sector and from changes to land-clearing.

We’ve “achieved” nothing in other sectors like agriculture, transport, waste and industry.

Methane emissions from sheep and cattle amount to 60Mt. Trashing the live-export trade may help reduce

With enough bad luck, and poor management, plus some sacrificial lambs on the altar, we might be the only country on Earth that meets its Paris agreement. Rejoice.

This is assuming that our population stops growing and Australia blocks all immigration tomorrow. That’s right, Tom Quirk has not made any allowance for the 250,000 immigrants arriving presently.

These are optimistic best case numbers.

Jo

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Will Australia make it to Paris 2030?

Guest post by Tom Quirk

In 2005 Australia emitted 608 million tonnes (Mt) of CO2 – equivalent greenhouse gases. To achieve a 26 to 28% reduction we must cut emissions to an average of 444 Mt.

Due to accounting changes to land use and forestry, Australia could claim a fall of 104 Mt of CO2 from 2005 to 2012. The emissions from cutting down trees were no longer to be accounted immediately but could be written off over longer periods of years. A most interesting change was for forest fires to be treated as Acts of God and not counted in national emissions. An external issue is whether God is anthropogenic.

Forest and peat fires are a major source of atmospheric CO2. Consider that during the 1997 – 98 El Nino, Indonesia alone was estimated to have produced the equivalent of between 13 – 40% of the annual global fossil fuel emissions and the total estimate for the El Nino was 50% from forest and peat fires.

The changes for Australia are shown in Figure 1 along with the emissions from agriculture. The emissions from agriculture show no changes over the years of land use changes. This may be the result of enteric emissions of methane being some 90% of the agriculture CO2 equivalent emissions.

Figure 1: Emissions for changes in land use and forestry and from agriculture.

The changes in land use and forestry appear to have plateaued from 2012 to 2017. So for this analysis no changes are assumed after 2017. A reassessment would be necessary if there are new government regulations on land use.

The changes in emissions from the sources identified in the Commonwealth Department of Environment and Energy statistics shows that the only significant reduction in emissions has come from electricity generation apart from land use changes. The trends for the period 2005 to 2017 show a grouping of 3 sources, waste, agriculture and industrial processes with no significant trend. Fugitive emissions have shown a rise for the period 2015 to 2017 and this may be a result of new LNG developments that may further increase these emissions. Finally stationary energy (not electricity) and transport show continuous increases that exceed the decreased emissions from electricity generation. These trends are plotted against average annual emissions for 2005 to 2017 in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Annual trends in megatonnes of CO2 – equiv. Emissions plotted as related to their annual average emissions.

So extending these trends to 2030 will give a measure of the reductions to be faced to meet the target figure of 444 Mt of CO2 – equiv. This can be seen in Figure 3.

From 2005 to 2017, government policies have only led to changes in electricity generation and perhaps land use. The projections here will only look at electricity and agriculture combined with land use.

The trajectory with no further changes leads to total emissions of 553 Mt in 2030, a difference of 109 Mt from the target of 444 Mt. For electricity, the projected fall in emissions is included in the projected total emissions, so the adoption of the NEG target of halving the 2017 electricity generator emissions removes a further 69 Mt of emissions. The final shortfall is then 40 Mt of emissions to close the gap.

The final question is then how will this difference be made to disappear. It seems that further regulation in agriculture may be the direction of government policy. A reduction in sheep and cattle numbers would reduce the methane emissions which at present are about 60 Mt of CO2 equiv. gas and this might then give rise to land use changes with a reduction of emissions with the changes in land use absorbing more CO2.

Government policies have been unsuccessful in reducing emissions while causing substantial domestic and industry damage in the economy. Policies for agriculture will threaten another major revenue stream for the country. We might be better not to finish in Paris unlike the Tour de France.

216 comments to Australia needs to sacrifice cows and sheep for Paris too

How do we get the message to our “leaders”? Surely they aren’t all intellectually gutless? Reading Nicol ,Evans, Curry and Svensmark is not going to hurt! Meanwhile we are being led down a “feel good” path to economic oblivion by a gaggle of green delusionists. Very democratic!

Well it is democratic. Voters elect the government through our democratic system. If people don’t really like what’s happening they have their opportunity to make a difference at the next election. Voters have the power to stop all this nonsense so easily. Too bad they don’t bother to exercise that right. That’s why people like Turnbull and Shorten get away with what they are doing – the voters so far have let them. It will be interesting to see what happens next time. Of course there is always the chance of a leadership change but that’s hardly democratic. We’ve been through so many of those over the recent years and people are sick of it. We if we really want our leaders to be changed that often we might as well have an election every year or two. Of course there’s zero chance of that ever happening.

Who said it was compulsory to vote for one of the two majors? There are other choices and if enough make that choice then neitehr major party can form a majority government. Otherwise, follow the piper (actually two of them) which is what most voters are doing.

PeterS, as one looking in from the outside it appears that your proportional representation voting system is rigged towards the two main parties, both by the ballot paper layout and how the votes are allocated.

It appears that the only way that a protest vote could be lodged is by the voter deliberately messing up his/her paper. What is needed on the ballot papers is a clear option that says ‘non of these listed on this paper’ and a space to write in a preferred candidate with no shuffling about of votes. You might then end up with some thinking people in parliament and not clones of the left or near left greens and /or bankers that have a common agenda (21).

The problem is that the average voter does not know enough about the impracticalities and falsehoods of this idealistic nonsense. And those who try to tell the story have been demonized as unbelievers.

We are not talking about being an expert in everything. We are talking about electing representatives in a government to do what we want them to do – represent the wishes an aspirations of the people. If people are not prepared to think before they vote then what’s the point of voting at all? We might as well have a lottery.

I’m afraid that’s right. The public are too stupid or can’t be bothered to learn the truth so the lesson will have to be taught the hard way. Let’s see how bad things get before the tide turns. One reason Trump won in the US is they had a massive shock to their economy throughout the GFC. It woke up many. We hadn’t had our economic shock yet. When it does hit it will change the opinions of most and consider the climate issue was irrelevant given their livelihoods will be at stake. Reality bites and it will bite real hard with a lot of people suffering massive pain. Even a brainless fool will sense something is wrong.

I’m afraid that’s right. The public are too dumb or can’t be bothered to learn the truth so the lesson will have to be taught the hard way. Let’s see how bad things get before the tide turns. One reason Trump won in the US is they had a massive hit to their economy throughout the GFC. It woke up many. We hadn’t had our economic hit yet. When it does hit it will change the opinions of most and consider the climate issue was irrelevant given their livelihoods will be at stake. Reality bites and it will bite real hard with a lot of people suffering much pain.

You vision el gordo is more imaginary than real but I wish and hope it would come to pass. You assume though the public will agree and vote for the government. Chances are it could go the other way and people reject such a proposal and give electoral victory to the ALP and Greens. We simply do not know enough to know what will happen. That’s why Turnbull and Shorten are so convinced they are both on the right path. It’s also the reason why Abbot et el should make the move to replace Turnbull and take the risk. They probably can’t because they don’t have the numbers. The next federal election will be very telling. If nothing changes by then and voters give either major party a majority rule then it proves to me the voters in general are stupid. In such a critical junction the ACP and ON together should stop either forming a majority government and the Greens vote should almost disappear. If none of this happens then the voters are definitely stupid. So let’s wait and see.

Not really. We elected Tony Abbott in a landslide. He was removed specifically so the UN could get Australia’s signature in Paris. We did not vote for that. Lord Mockton warned us about the UN attempt to remove Abbott and specifically about their lackeys Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop.

As for the last election, only the appalling behaviour of Daniel Andrews in Victoria saved Turnbull from extinction, by one seat. So we have extreme left, Bill shorten, very left Malcolm Turnbull. What choice is there?

But it’s worse than than that. Our democracy is under a Constitution which can supposedly only be changed by a specific process.

Unfortunately, by signing international Agreements, our Executive branch effectively changes the nature of our freedoms and rights under the Constitution – changing the Constitution, undemocratically and unconstitutionally – Christopher Monckton was right – and Bishop and Turnbull fiddle & strut their stuff at the UN, while Australia yearns – for low cost, reliable electricity and the right to chose, and the right to use our property.

Now we are talking about the other problem with our system – the ability for a party in government to replace their leader without the consent of the people. That’s certainly not democratic. What I was referring to is the federal election to elect the government in the first place. Totally different topics. As for the first point it should not be allowed but that’s the system we have. That’s one advantage of a Presidential style republic along the lines of what the US has. Impeachment of a President is a long and extensive process.

Party politics mate. Bit like how gangs operate. Nothing to do with the intellectual clout or validity of ideas. Political parties are dreadful organisations. They swallow young idealistic people and beat them down into soldier ants. Of course being political organisations cost is incidental and the best excel in money for virtue. None of them give a rats arse about anything except when they are specifically required to put your money where their mouth is. The left are so adept at that which is why I loath them.

I absolutely agree.
IMO Obama was also part of the cabal that saw to it that Abbott here and Harper in Canada were toppled .

The whole exercise has destroyed democracy in Australia…the people’s vote having been deliberately overturned just 15 months after a landslide Abbott win.. with Turnbull’s empty chair stunt that began the coup… and with Turnbull’s sellout to the UN and forcing Australia to commit economic and social suicide by making Australia completely dependent on weather …it’s destroying Australia itself and our children’s futures.

Australia is being forced into being the canary for the world…in the experiment to see if a first world industrialized country can power absolutely everything …heavy industry…heavy transport..ca rs…military..subs & frigate build…drone operations…border security…national security…agriculture…ports …and with more than half of our exports GONE—have enough export income to fund Medicare..PBS…NDIS…pensions…welfare…jobs….OR whether it just DIES…becomes the monument to mind-blowing stupidity.

This Turnbull government is even driving Australia back into burning wood to push out coal and gas..to make absolutely sure that Australia will be COMPLETELY dependent on weather-dependent wind and solar and their firming and myriad ancillary services that will also be weather-dependent because their batteries and PHES will only have weather-dependent electricity to charge them.

Snowy Hydro and Snowy 2 will be at risk from drought as Snowy Hydro was in 2007 and Tassy hydro has been…and Snowy 2′s business case depends on weather-dependent intermittents for its pumping.

We have the only ‘leader’ in the world who is deliberately putting the country at enormous risk…and my family won’t vote at the next election at all or will deliberately vote informal…the only way to ensure this malevolent creature can’t possibly benefit from our vote..even by preferences.

We’re stuffed either way….if Turnbull wins , he’ll continue to do GreenLabor policy that LNP voters expressly voted against..and it will mean LNP are now completely brainwashed hostages…if Labor wins at least Shorten will be doing the policies he’s flogged to voters for five years…not his opponent’s policy.

We won’t vote again at all until Tony Abbott is reinstated as PM and democracy restored..WHY WOULD ANYONE…to do otherwise is to accept that democracy is permanently DEAD…that we don’t care about democracy.

Cory has gone much further than Abbott but he is beyond ridicule – he is ignored. So what does it take to expose the scam? Abbott and Cory can’t do it that’s for sure because they keep trying and fail to get the message across to the broad population.

The media could help. So far only the Australian is prepared to run articles and comment exposing the futility and needlessness of the various policies. Most other outlets only promote the stories promoting AGW while ignoring the increasing number of stories questioning it.

Can’t agree this time KK. Abbott may have said more than others but that isn’t exactly an endorsement when others have said zilch. (Take note Corey.) The speech was notable for what it omitted rather than for what he said and the way he said it. A wasted opportunity as far as I’m concerned. His love of the Party above all else constrains everything he says. Rock the boat Tony for goodness sake.

As to his electoral risk, it isn’t the electorate he should be fearing, it’s leftie Photios and his mate Sinodinos trying to stack Abbott’s branch and dis-endorse him. They were already doing that months ago. He might as well go out with a bang as a wimper.

This whole business disturbs me. The deceit and manipulation by TurnFreudShop is mind numbing and for once tried to imagine how TA could become extremely attractive as a leader for a large majority of his party.

Politics is ugly, Australian and otherwise. At least in the US enough people woke up and elected a real leader. I wish we could say the same thing here and enough cast their votes to a party that is finally making sense instead of the usual trash from both major parties. If voters here don’t care about the energy issues enough then don’t they better not bother to complain when things go pear shaped. They have had plenty of opportunity to learn about what’s really happening with the science of climate change and the renewables scam.

Well said beowulf. In essence Abbott is a softy and an appeaser extraordinaire. He might as well said nothing – well in fact he pretty much did. Basically he’s saying he’s for coal and against placing so much reliance on rewneables but he still thinks we should keep reducing our emissions. Unless he starts talking about nuclear he’s a fool.

‘Cory Bernardi, now an independent, has always been a climate sceptic and opposed to any emissions-reduction target or policy. Bernardi calls out Abbott on the hoodwink claim, noting that as a Liberal senator, he and others lobbied Abbott against setting a Paris target. Bernardi is in no doubt Abbott fully understood what he was doing at the time.’

On Paul Murray Live July 3 in a discussion about the Paris Accord ex-MP Fiona Scott said something along the lines that we must follow up on our commitment if we want to improve the air quality and the pollution in Sydney.
It’s disturbing to learn from their own mouth that someone who was a member of the government in the House of Reps 2013 – 2016 did not, and still does not, understand the elementary fundamentals of probably the most important issue facing the country.
It invites the question how many other members of parliament are as bone-headed ignorant.

That sounds about right, so what is your gut feeling on mass immigration? I know the electorate want to see the pace slowed down, but its a minefield because the cultural Marxist consortium agree on the numbers.

And as economic prosperity declines further, where will the jobs come from, and the extra tax revenue to provide infrastructure and services?

A senior mining executive addressed a federal budget breakfast at one of the large accounting firms in Sydney during the Keating Labor years and time of the 1990s recession, the worst in sixty years for Australia. He decided to speak about the engine rooms of the economy and in particular the mining industry.

To cut a long story short, he pointed out that when government creates conditions that frighten foreign investment away there is a negative impact on economic prosperity longer term. He said that within ten years or so and before Australians realised the creeping danger mining activities decline and so does economic prosperity. As a US candidate for election to government once remarked: It’s the economy, Stupid.

A combination of creeping UN Agenda 21 & 30, de-industrialisation since 1970s, and more, and now Paris Agreement economic negative impact I cannot understand how Australia can deal with a larger population by 2030 and beyond.

‘If the Prime Minister refuses to concede to any of the National Party’s requests, party leader Michael McCormack could face his first big test.

‘Some Nationals could cross the floor to vote against it, or in a more dramatic development Mr McCormack could withdraw that whole party’s support.

‘That could rattle his relationship with the Liberals but the alternative would leave a number of more outspoken Nationals poised to privately or publicly accuse their leader of failing to flex his muscle.’

Just do accounting tricks. The rest of them do it. Europeans are snakes; China can dud to the point where some fake art is more valuable than originals; the US, which gave birth to the Federal Reserve, (un-federal and without reserves) knows how to fiddle like Paganini.

Stop wasting money and resources, practise thrift and actual conservation…but fudge the rest. If you get caught, have an inquiry and fudge the inquiry. Just make sure you keep the journos fed and drunk.

I’m not saying any of this will be moral, easy or without risk. But anything beats de-industrialising to the point where PM Dastyari sells Queensland to China so South Australia can be a national park at last.

The problem here is that we are preaching to the converted. We need to disseminate this useful info out into the wider community at every level. But it needs to be simplified and summarised, in a form that the general public can understand. Like, the greens, we need to keep saying the same thing, over and over, until the general public get the message.

“Preaching to the converted” Exactly Graham ! Been thinking and saying that ever since I found this site ! Most contributors here seem disinterested in educating the uninformed among the voting public !

I cop abuse every time I share selected posts from here to Facebook,Annie ! But that doesn’t discourage me because hopefully the several positive responders to each post would be better educated on the subjects covered here, and just maybe able to pass on their newfound knowledge among those among their own circle of aquaintences.

The great thing about this blog is that it represents a location where I can come to discuss the truths about CO2 induced global warming and associated topics like politics, theft, corruption, deceit etc.

Basically, from a physical ( scientific ) point of view, there is no warming mechanism that enables CO2 to preferentially heat the atmosphere any more than if some other gas was substituted in it’s place.

End of Story.

End of Scam.

Unfortunately, No.

Any academic, politician or government employee who voiced such science would be Ridded.

The public has been skillfully manipulated to accept the CAGW scam and the problem is to turn that around.

Now I am not playing dumb, well not completely but I am playing truly ignorant here!

Will somebody please lay out in a nice and simple form for this old timer just what this NEG [ National Energy Guarantee ] actually consists of,

What it is supposed to do? or

What is it supposed to do?

And how it is going to do it ?

What is it going to cost?

Who will be the losers both big and small?

And who will be better off or if you like the winners out of the implementation of the NEG if it is ever implemented.

I figure that if I don’t know anything about this NEG, then there are likely to be about 23.5 million Australian citizens who are in the same boat and are just as ignorant of the main thrust of the NEG let alone of the details..

To those stupid, dumb political ass—-es who got us into this mess through their utterly incompetent interference with a perfectly good power generation and distribution system that had provided cheap reliable power for over a half a century to the by far majority of Australian citizens , get the hell out of the way you incompetent ass–es with all your business destroying and highly biased and bigoted subsidies and your abjectly incompetent interfering regulations and restrictions and your incompetent nanny state bureacracy which has almost completely destroyed the generation and marketing of power structures of those past decades.
Just let the market get on with providing cheap reliable power as it did for at least three generations of Australians in the past..

First and foremost, withdraw that ultimate piece of blatantly discrimatory political stupidity whereby politicians think and believe they are so much better at picking winners than anybody else in the community by rescinding the rights of renewable energy to always and without exception to have to be the first choice as the source of power by the AEMO.

Remove ALL subsidies to every form of electrical energy production and let all those oh so brave renewable energy scammers who make all those Joseph Goebbels level propaganda claims about their efficiencies and their cheapness of operating take their chances against HELE coal and gas fired power generators.

If the politicals just got out of the bloody way, removed all impediments to coal or gas or nuclear or what ever means of generationg electricity then within five years we might then actually finish up with another very high efficiency , reasonably priced source of electrical power for nearly all Australians be it coal or gas or horrors, even renewable energy or just perhaps amongst the first in the world to use the new, no emmissions, replaceable , minimum servicing and maintenance, 20 year replacement periods , mass produced modular reactors as Australia’s source of near unlimited cheap as chips electrical energy in a distrubuted grid network.

What it is supposed to do? or Keep the lights on while reducing CO2 output and lowering electricity cost.

What is it supposed to do? Keep the lights on while reducing CO2 output and lowering electricity cost.

And how it is going to do it ? Place obligation on large energy users and retailers to contract for sufficient dispatchable capacity to meet their share of the peak demand as well as contracting enough ambient energy generation to ensure their “book” mix meets the set CO2/eMWh target.

What is it going to cost? Heaps.

Who will be the losers both big and small? All electricity consumers using grid power both big and small.

The dynamics still need to be sorted but this will likely kill the spot market in electricity. One potential benefit is eliminating opportunities to game the market. Contracts will be set long periods out and I expect dispatchable generators will lock in take or pay contracts.

From an operating perspective it would sort of make sense for dispatchable generators to produce at their lowest cost while selling at their contracted price, which would mean operating at maximum output as continuously as possible. This could limit market access to intermittent ambient production. Intermittent ambient producers would be best to tie in with fast response gas or hydro so they can offer dispatchable contracts. That would make AEMOs scheduling function less onerous as they would be back to having all dispatchable generation.

The CO2 targets have not been set yet and AEMO have indicated they will not be calling for more generating capacity to meet the reliability standard till 2020.

So under the NEG, the big users of power with lots of employees get shut down in their power useage when the wind stops blowing and the Sun don’t shine or shine much and every body else also wants a crack at the very limited and getting less available coal and gas fired power.

The employeees are sent home as no power, no work., no production, no earnings, no profit. [ the ABC will be happy as they along with the greens and sections of the Labour party can't tell and don't know the differences between income and profits ]

The third or fourth time around and the executives decide no power nor any sign it might get better so no use in trying to keep producing here so a universal “Don’t come Monday” is distributed to all employees.

Unemployment rockets up
The dole expenses go up,
The taxes stop flow into the coffers,
The public get very restless and we collectively as a nation go to hell in a bread basket thanks once again to the utter stupidity and inherent inability of third and fourth rate politicians to admit they have made a major cockup and they had better just get out of the way whilst other far more competent people get to fix those same politician’s f—ups.

I would not be so sure Australia will not meet the Paris target. Electricity and gas prices are bound to maintain their upward trajectory. That puts more businesses at risk. Mortgage stress will build and banks will continue to tighten credit causing house prices to fall, making owners feel less wealthy. Chinese will be less inclined to invest in Australian property putting further downward pressure on prices. All that leads to a wonderfully self re-inforcing downward economic spiral.

One outcome of the unfolding misery is less economic activity and that ensures lower CO2 production.

Since 2011 I have been predicting 2019 would be the year for house price fall. Back then 2019 was the year the median age in Australia was forecast to reach 38 years. Data from other “western” countries suggests that is the point when the population shifts from net spenders to net savers. Immigration has pushed it a little later since then to some point after 2020:https://www.statista.com/graphic/1/260493/median-age-of-the-population-in-australia.jpg
But there are enough emerging signs that the shift is close or even here. It already appears that house prices nationally are on the slide. A bit earlier than expected due to tighter lending from banks involved in exposing grimy details of their less than prudent practices.

There are indications the current account deficit bottomed out in 2016 and we may see a VEEEERY GRAAADUAAAAL recovery to surplus. There have already been some handsome monthly trade surpluses in 2018.

So Paris is certainly dead for USA; Germany appear to be making all the right moves but for no result; UK will keep a stiff upper lip and forge ahead with its wood burners and maybe a new nuclear plant or two. However Australia might surprise and actually make the grade. It seems two large States now have premiers with Weatherill’s touch for promising to make weather better by crippling their state economies.

At least one positive about reduced economic activity is the noticeable improvement in travel times.

Australia’s target – Australia will reduce emissions to 26-28 per cent on 2005 levels by 2030.
On a reduction in per person and emissions intensity basis, our target will exceed those of the United States, Japan, the European Union, Korea, and Canada. Between 2005 and 2030 Australia’s emissions per capita will fall by 50–52 per cent and emissions intensity of the economy by 64–65 per cent. This is a significant achievement given that emissions are linked with population and economic growth, and Australia’s population and economy are growing faster than most other developed countries. Australia’s population is expected to grow at 1.5 per cent per annum to 2030, significantly higher than the OECD average of 0.4 per cent …

Yes Hepburn Springs is a typical wind plant with a nameplate rating of 4.1 MW which actually delivers 1.2 MW at a capacity factor of 29%.
This “cheap” wind power actually costs users $60.00/MWh plus RE certificates of $85.00/MWh for a total of $145/MWh.
We need to remember that Victorians used to get reliable, wholesale power from the SECV for 40.00/MWh.
Feel free to check these numbers.
Terence M

Cow, n., 1. The mature female of any species of cattle, esp. domesticated cattle. 2. Informal: till the cows come home, for a very long time, effectively forever. E.g., we will not get rid of climate-craft until the cows come home. See eructation, Warmerland.

“Of all the beasts that God allows
In the green and grassy fields of Warmerland,
We most of all dislike the cows;
Their noxious eructations should be banned.
Yes, we most of all dislike the cows;
Their bovine flatulence we just can’t stand.
Let’s drive them from our grassy land.
All the other naughty ruminants should go too.
We’ve given it a lot of thought. What else are we to do?
They must be exiled somewhere. Why not France?
Millions go there every year, if given half a chance.
We’re told it already has a few la vache qui rit,
Just the place to send the lot, hopefully for free.”

Australia will probably achieve its Paris target by exporting its carbon emissions. Then they should add back the carbon emissions contained in the imports of cars, aluminium, steel etc as well as the exports of coal to give a true idea of their total carbon balance.

Another way is to estimate the current land Use and Forestry emissions in the same way that Kyoto targets were achieved by, the defunct DE&E bureaucracy, and you can claim saving as many million tonnes that you reckon you can get away with.

If they are going to include land and land use as CO2 sources then they should equally include the fact that the Australian continent is a massive carbon sink giving us a huge negative net CO2 output. The rest of the world should be paying us billions per year to sequester their CO2 for them.

The Chinese population alone therefore breathes out about 440 million tonnes of CO2 each year.
.

The TOTAL of ALL of Australia’s emmissions in 2017 is calculated at about 550 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent .
.

The 1.35 billion Chinese population alone breathes out the equivalent in CO2 of 80% of Australia’s TOTAL of ALL of its CO2 emmissions from all sources each year.
.

Then there is India with its 1.3 billion estimated population soon to pass the Chinese population numbers if it hasn’t already done so.
.

And we here in Australia are expected by the ass h- es that are our elected politicians to pay and pay and suffer energy deprivation particularly amongst the lower payed and elderly in a bid to demonstrate to the world our POLITICIAN’S completely arrogant, self centred, egoistic virtue signaling to the rest of the planet , a planet which just doesn’t give a single damn about all the virtue signaling by aforesaid Australian political dumb-asses.

Data Source:
I used the
Global Land—Ocean Temperature Index from GISS because I could. The UAH Temperature Dataset (satellite) may be slightly less scary than GISS’s one and your preferred one for accuracy, so don’t let my use of GISS data put you off at all. This source is a graph.

You will notice it’s `zero’ point is what it calls the “1950 to 1981 mean.” All temperatures are an Anomaly relative to the mean. I prefer “Variance.” To make matters even harder, they haven’t given the 1950-1981 mean temperature in Degrees. Oh neat. Keep ‘em igorant! Can’t have them knowing anything.

You’ll notice that it’s supiciously flat considering that by 1974 we were all being fed “Panic Now™” stories about an impending “New Ice Age” and we would have to stop burning Fossil Fuels if we wanted to survive.

I sure do not remember feeling that little warming bump right about 1960. You can see that Gavin’s been at it elsewhere: the 1930s through to 1948 were about the same as the 1980s to 1997 in real life. This graph is obviously not “real life.”

Oh, sorry, I forgot, we exist in the Adjustocene so apart from commenting, I’m not making any corrections to Gavin’s Masterpiece.

Method:
I’m working off the graph, using the lowess smooth (the red line) for this first attempt, and I’m reading the temp anomaly for each decadal year (the year which closes the decade: eg 1950, 1960 etc), and converting them to K. (that’s easy: delete C and replace it with K) It starts in 1880 and stops in what appears to be 2018. I’ll interpolate 2015 and stop there.

I’m taking each temperature anomaly as a graph point, and not using the anomaly averaged for the decade. (See the table of anomalies below the graph.)

Annual Average temperature for NZ(1860-2015) = 12.5°C & 285.65K (the Southern Hemisphere is included willy nilly in the NH figures, so I’m ignoring those and using the figure for NZ from De Freitas et al (2015)). Complain if you wish, but I will ignore you.

Anomalies are calculated with reference to the mean and expressed as both K and %. Really scary stuff eh?

Notes:
Don’t worry about these figures not being accurate to three decimal places: they’re not. What we are looking at is the order of magnitude of the results. Normally, the margin of error would be +/- 3%. That’s an order of magnitude larger than our variance. A whole order of magnitude!

There is no temperature variance of 1% or more. It’s all well less than 0.5%.

That’s it. If you graph it, to full scale, as a bar graph with a vertical scale from 0 – 300K, you see barely a ripple across the top. That’s scary? Planet destroying? Human extinction stuff? They’ve got to be joking. Unfortunately they aren’t and they expect us to believe them. Nah.

In other words: the warmists are stomping around in the thermal and measurement noise, looking for trends and trying to panic every one when it goes up by less than half a percentage point; ie: plus 0.95°K or (0.95 x 100)/285.95K or +0.29 to 0.3%.

A variance of only 0.3%(max)? And that’s scary? That’s only a bit more than the variance of the Solar TSI over that time.

It’s Propaganda, Purely Propaganda and Nothing But Propaganda.
That especially applies to the Paris “Accord.”

Even if we did all we could to comply with the Paris Agreement what would the impact be on the total CO2 of the earth’s atmosphere? It’s like asking the question about how much impact we would make on the global temperature. The answer is at best negligible and at worst zero.

Ostriches stuck with head in sands. First time in records Sydney so warm today early in July. Many people in Sydney west wanted good break from heat. Heat already start. Warm is happening no matter what ostriches say.

I Googled to find out how long methane remains in the atmosphere. The Guardian, EPA and Washington Post dominate the top of the list.

But I think I found an impartial site.

1. Rapid oxidation. Burning methane is basically the same as burning Natural gas. Usually you see this at land fills where they purposely catch and burn the methane as it is released into the atmosphere from the rotting garbage. For this reason sometimes methane can be collected and used as a biofuel.

2. Slow oxidation. Methane that comes into contact with highly reactive atmospheric gasses like ozone will oxidize on contact usually producing CO2 + H2O. This slow oxidation removes that methane in about 9.6 years.

3. Biotic oxidation. Methanotrophs in aerobic upland soils are prokaryotes that metabolize methane as their only source of carbon and energy. Even though rotting vegetation in well drained aerobic (oxic) soils does produce methane, those soils are a net sink for atmospheric methane.

So, the longest some of it stays, is 9.6 years average. The rest gets consumed within the soil pretty quick by the looks.

Atmospheric methane (CH4 ) directly contributes 0.5 Wm−2 to total radiative forcing by long-lived greenhouse gases (2.77Wm−2 in 2009; update of [1]).
Its role in atmospheric chemistry produces tropospheric ozone and stratospheric water vapour, which indirectly add approximately 0.2Wm−2 [2] to its climate forcing.
It has a short lifetime (approx. 9 years) compared with CO2 and is very close to a steady state [3], so reductions in its emissions would have immediate benefits for climate.
Moreover, both palaeorecords and present-day studies suggest that some sources of emissions, such as wetlands and methane hydrates, may be subject to strong positive feedbacks on warming [4].
Methane is, therefore, very important in efforts to mitigate climate change.

Putting aside the issue of whether greenhouse effect is actually present in the atmosphere (I believe it’s irrelevant ), the quoted passage reads like something out of the warmers Good Book when it states that methane, at 9 years, has a shorter residence time than CO2.

It is my firm understanding that a number of papers clearly identify CO2 as having a residence time of 7 years or less.

IPCC places the residence time of a CO2 molecule in the open atmosphere at close to 100 years, a figure which it seems nobody other than certain IPCC contributors will have a bar of.
.

A much lower figure such as the commonly accepted range of 7 to 17 years residence time in the open atmosphere of the CO2 molecule really messes with a lot of the modelled climate change scenarios.
.

In short after a trillion plus dollars of wealth splashed onto global warming / climate change ideologies, 30 years of research on the same, a couple of tens of thousands of researchers “working and theorising “[ ???? ] on climate change, innumerable modelled scenarios none of which have predicted let alone accurately predicted the changes in the global climate and / or shifts in frequencies and intensities of climate generated phenomena ie; cyclones etc or the changes in the annual Arctic ice freeze and etc , no one has yet accurately measured with a corresponding and matching independent proof , the real life residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is one of the absolute basic underlying criteria as to whether global warming aka climate change actually is driven by changes in those major but few green house gases.

As with all of climate science such claimed and prime criteria for measuring any effects on the climate as the CO2 atmospheric residence time is subject to estimation, guestimation, opinion, expert opinion, over a pot of beer or coffee, circular prediction, prediction, modelling, ad hoc adjusting, homogenisation and etc.

Tom Quirk has not made any allowance for the 250,000 immigrants arriving presently.

jo, it would be better to substitute “ANNUALLY” for “presently”.

the paradox is the CAGW mob – especially ABC and most of the rest of the MSM plus Labor and the Greens – are on board with this massive annual intake while, at the same time, insisting we reduce our CO2 emissions, which will be rising every year due to the massive intake!

so many countries signed on to Paris, yet this ***”guy” Trump is the cause of every failure:

5 Jul: CarbonPulse: GCF talks collapse, chief resigns as US funding hole looms larger
A four-day meeting of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) board broke on Wednesday without taking any major decisions, as rich and poor nations rowed and failed to tackle how to replenish the GCF’s rapidly depleting funds currently lacking a US contribution.

4 Jul: ClimateChangeNews: UN climate fund chief resigns for personal reasons while board meeting collapses
In a dramatic conclusion to a meeting that failed to approve any finance for the developing world, Howard Bamsey announced his exit from the Green Climate Fund.
By Megan Darby
Howard Bamsey resigned as executive director of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) with immediate effect on Wednesday, in a bombshell finish to a fraught board meeting
The Australian cited “pressing personal reasons” in his resignation letter, adding that it was best he leave before the next round of fundraising started…

It came as the four-day meeting in Songdo, South Korea collapsed with no decisions on 11 funding bids worth nearly $1 billion, or on how to top up the flagship climate finance initiative’s dwindling resources…

Sweden’s Lennart Båge, who led the session single-handed while Nicaraguan co-chair Paul Oquist stayed home to deal with a political crisis, said: “This has been a very difficult and disappointing board meeting for all of us, but most importantly for those people who are most vulnerable to climate change impacts, and who depend on the activities of the fund.”…

“We were hoodwinked by developed countries,” South Africa’s Zaheer Fakir, a former chair of the board, told Climate Home News. “It’s a mess.”…
One of the major areas of contention is control of the replenishment process. US representative Geoffrey Okamoto said it should be “donor-driven”, to the chagrin of development campaigners.
President Donald Trump is refusing to honour an outstanding $2bn US pledge to the fund.

if these people weren’t pawns for the CAGW mob hoping to rake in trillions, this kind of rubbish would have ended long ago:

4 Jul: ClimateChangeNews: UK judge postpones decision on landmark climate case
The high court in London has postponed its decision on whether 11 citizens can bring their complaint that the UK’s climate targets need to be changed before the full court
By Soila Apparicio
Climate legal group Plan B and the 11 plaintiffs brought the case to try to compel Greg Clark, secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy (Beis), to increase the ambition of the UK’s 2050 carbon target.
“The UK is not doing enough,” Tim Crosland, director of Plan B told Climate Home News. “The benchmark target is now out of place. We are arguing that it is a breach of human rights.”…

The group of plaintiffs, aged between nine and 79 years old, began their legal case against the UK government in December 2017…
Inside the full courtroom, which included a class of schoolchildren, Plan B lawyers questioned how the government could sign the Paris climate accord but not be bound by its goals.
CHN heard one of the 14-year-old schoolchildren, who had travelled to the hearing from the east coast, saying “that was so cool”, after leaving the court for lunch…

5 Jul: Gizmodo: There’s Vegan Electricity Now Too
By Gary Cutlack
There’s vegan electricity now, eliminating troublesome animal by-products from the process of charging your telephone.
It’s necessary because some forms of power generation are non-vegan, specifically those that use anaerobic digestion to eat away the wastes of the food industry to create low-CO2 gas, power and heat…

This vegan-certified power option is being orchestrated by green energy supplier Ecotricity, which says rival supplier and generator SSE has admitted to using dead salmon from a fish farm to make electricity in the past, so if you don’t want any part of that modern weirdness you might be reassured by Ecotricity’s Vegan Society registration status that proves your electricity is not powered by rotting meat…http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2018/07/theres-vegan-electricity-now-too/

Emissions. Who cares? The presumption that CO2 levels are controlled by mankind is obviously wrong. After all, there are CO2 levels without humans. Plus radio carbon dating shows conclusively less than 2% fossil CO2 in the air. It also shows that half the CO2 vanishes into the oceans every 14 years. That should be the end of the story, but still we go on, trying to reduce ‘emissions’.

Mankind does not control CO2. We could burn all the trees in the world tomorrow and it would be back to normal in no time at all. CO2 levels are set by ocean surface temperature and the buffer in the oceans already is 50x that in the entire atmosphere. I cannot abide this concession that we control CO2 or that it stays in the air forever. All gases obey Henry’s law and most gases are in the ocean, not in the air.

Too many scientists are anxiously pushing their own points of view. They are mostly right. However it does not matter. Man does not control how much air is in the air let alone CO2. That should be an end to it but we have Paris nonsense to consider. Controlling by law something we cannot control, CO2 levels.

I would add that the use of the word ‘emissions’ is cunning. Focus on what you can measure, not the results of what you are doing.

How much did world CO2 levels go down as a result of shutting down South Australia’s electricity? How much have CO2 levels gone down with 350,000 windmills?

Why doesn’t anyone bother to measure the actual effect they say they want. So they measure temperature and ‘emissions’. If you measured actual CO2 you would have to say in 30 years at $1,500Bn a year, nothing measurable has been achieved. Why not just stop?

It is called doubling down. If you believe you cannot lose because you are on the side of right then you double down on the next campaign. Double the effort, double the money because you know you are on a winner and it will eventually pay back.

This time it got more into CO2 and I made a comment about the scary temperature rise of ocean top 2000m being 0.114C in the last 60 years. The debate basically ended when it became clear that MikeW had no idea about e-m fields. However a late comer today offered this not so compelling retort to my comment about ocean temperature rise:

RobertO Rick • an hour ago
Hi Rick, Your still an idiot.
“The top 2000m of the oceans have warmed a whopping 0.114C since 1955. Now there a scary number.”

How many people live in that 2000m

“The bottom 3000m have not changed in temperature.”
Very correct line and when will it change possibly never that humans will see. Again how many people live there?

Climate Change is about the atmosphere and yes some of the effects that the atmosphere can induce in the top 30m sea relating to temperature.

So what warms first? Will it be the sea? Not a hope!
What about the glaciers, They all retreated over the 70 years. I visited Franz Josef Glacier in 1960. The local council had just completed a new road turnaround and installed a new footpath about 6 feet wide. I remember hanging onto the new railing and able to just touch a block of ice that had fallen off the end of the glasier. The glacier has retreated some 3 km from the road.

So how much heat does it take just to melt the ice. How much heat does it take to raise the temperature of the ice to melting point and then how much heat to raise the water up to the sea level temperature.

So do all the ice in the world that has retreated in the last 70 years and that just one of the factor in a Climate Change program

So there you have it from RobertO. Oceans have no bearing on climate!!!

I think there are enough knowledgable soles visiting reneweconomy that comments like this are beneficial to my point so I do not bother responding to obviously silly comments. But you have to realise that a very large number of people have no idea and those who do have an idea have not bothered to look at the data.

I had some support at renew with this encounter. That does not bode well for my ongoing presence there because if they see the opinion being swayed they will chop me off. I was banned from macrobusiness as support grew there. I got to better then 50% of comments in support on some threads there.

When I read “We’ve achieved nothing in other sectors like agriculture, transport, waste and industry.” in the list of Key Points, my first thought was if they eliminated all the words after nothing (i.e. “We’ve achieved nothing in other sectors like agriculture, transport, waste and industry.” it would have been an accurate statement.

You may unfortunately prove to be right about babies. They can just as easily enact laws prohibiting reproduction as China did. And when that happens the government will at last have it’s long arm reaching right into your bedroom and your most intimate activities.

I cannot see any end to the nonsense — polite word for what is meant by juxtaposing the letters B and S.

So are the people who continue to vote for either major party and expecting a different result, assuming their respective leaders continue on with the madness of renewables and emission targets, which by the way have no impact at all on the continuing rise in measurable CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. Even if it eventually did, which it won’t given the tiny proportion of it that’s man-made, it would be centuries before we could notice it. This scam has some way to go but eventually it will be understand to be just that – a scam of historical proportions that will demand certain people to end up in prison for life.

I have accepted the resignation of Scott Pruitt as the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Within the Agency Scott has done an outstanding job, and I will always be thankful to him for this. The Senate confirmed Deputy at EPA, Andrew Wheeler, will…

…on Monday assume duties as the acting Administrator of the EPA. I have no doubt that Andy will continue on with our great and lasting EPA agenda. We have made tremendous progress and the future of the EPA is very bright!

With looking at another 3.5 years of drought to come, sure we can de-stock to the numbers required to meet their target.
But who will buy all the farms that will be sold? My guess O/S will buy up big, and cheap too boot or will the banks take control and keep for when the drought breaks?

When the shelves are empty, only then will people ask… what will we eat!

20 Jun: Washington Examiner: Jim Inhofe ‘embarrassed’ he doubted Scott Pruitt on ethics scandals
by John Siciliano
Sen. Jim Inhofe, a big supporter of Scott Pruitt, defended the Environmental Protection Agency administrator Wednesday, blaming everyone from the media to billionaire Trump opponent Tom Steyer for ginning up a fervor over the EPA chief’s ethical missteps that are under multiple investigations…
“Here’s a man with unlimited funds to spread an extreme liberal agenda,” Inhofe said. He said the anti-Pruitt campaign wasn’t being run directly by Steyer, but through his funding of the American Bridge PAC…READ ALLhttps://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/energy/jim-inhofe-embarrassed-he-doubted-scott-pruitt-on-ethics-scandals

5 Jul: Quartz: Scandal-plagued EPA head Scott Pruitt has been replaced by a coal lobbyist
By Heather Timmons
Pruitt’s replacement, Andrew Wheeler, is a former coal industry lobbyist with Faegre Baker Daniels who spent nearly a decade trying to get Congress to pass industry friendly laws. He also served as the vice president of the Washington Coal Club, a group of businessmen who meets monthly on Capitol Hill. Previously, Wheeler served as an aide to Republican senator James Inhofe from Oklahoma, who once presented a snowball on the Senate floor in an attempt to prove that climate change was a hoax…https://qz.com/1322131/andrew-wheeler-coal-lobbyist-replaces-scott-pruitt-as-head-of-epa/

(excerpt) The group Occupy Wall Street this week published Pruitt’s home address in Tulsa, which Inhofe said constituted taking “a pitchfork to it” and invading his private space.

5 Jul: Washington Free Beacon: Exclusive: Scott Pruitt’s Resignation Letter
Mr. President, it has been an honor to serve you in the Cabinet as Administrator of the EPA. Truly, your confidence in me has blessed me personally and enabled me to advance your agenda beyond what anyone anticipated at the beginning of your Administration. Your courage, steadfastness and resolute commitment to get results for the American people, both with regard to improved environmental outcomes as well as historical regulatory reform, is in fact occurring at an unprecedented pace and I thank you for the opportunity to serve you and the American people in helping achieve those ends.

That is why it is hard for me to advise you I am stepping down as Administrator of the EPA effective as of July 6. It is extremely difficult for me to cease serving you in this role first because I count it a blessing to be serving you in any capacity, but also, because of the transformative work that is occurring. However, the unrelenting attacks on me personally, my family, are unprecedented and have taken a sizable toll on all of us…http://freebeacon.com/politics/exclusive-scott-pruitts-resignation-letter/

3 Jul: Daily Caller: Woman Who Approached Pruitt At Restaurant Doubles Down During MSNBC Interview
by Mike Brest
She also called Pruitt “disgusting” and “corrupt,” adding that she’s unsure how he sleeps at night…
“It would have been great, if he was like ‘you know what, I’m really corrupt I’m going to resign right now and I hope whoever takes my place does something better for the environment.’ But I don’t think that’s realistic,” she said, describing her ideal interaction with Pruitt.
Mink appeared on MSNBC wearing a shirt that read, “Your Founding Fathers Owned Slaves.”…
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, DHS head Kirstjen Neilsen and presidential advisor Stephen Miller have all been confronted by protesters outside of their workplaces…

THE LATEST ATTACK ON TRUMP SUPPORTERS – YET HEAVY MORE INTERESTED IN COVERING FOR THE GREENS. EVEN THE HEADLINE IS WEAK:

5 Jul: Heavy.com: Kino Jimenez Kicked Out of Green Party After MAGA Video
By Jessica McBride
Kino Jimenez, who is accused of attacking a teen wearing a MAGA hat at a San Antonio area Whataburger restaurant, has been banned from the Texas Green Party as a result, Heavy learned in an exclusive interview with a top Green Party official.
In the interview, Gavino Zarate, secretary of the Harris County Green Party, who said he was speaking for the state party as a whole on the issue, condemned the incident, which was captured in a viral video that shows a man later identified as Kino Jimenez allegedly tossing a drink on a 16-year-old boy named Hunter Richard, using a racial slur, and then walking off with the teen’s MAGA hat.

“We all have different opinions of our president, but we don’t take it out on innocent kids who just happen to have a hat on,” Zarate told Heavy in an exclusive interview. “You may not like the hat or you may not like the president, but you don’t show that kind of aggression toward teenagers. It goes against everything the Green Party stands for. We are not violent. We do not take our aggression out on innocent young people.”…

“We are handling it in house. From our point of view, he is banned from being part of our organization,” said Zarate. You can watch the video later in this article. Be aware that it contains a racial slur and is disturbing…

However, San Antonio police told Heavy, “We will not confirm anything because this investigation is active and on-going. The suspect in this case has not been arrested. Per the Attorney General of Texas the report is not public because it identifies a minor.”…

Here’s what you need to know:
The Green Party Kicked Jimenez Out Because Its Official Says the Actions in the Video Counter Its Ideals.
According to Zarate, he removed Jimenez from the party’s website (see above before the removal), and Jimenez is now kicked out of the party, after the Green Party learned about the video. “What Kino has (allegedly) done out of his own will, he has really shed a negative light on our party,” he said, adding that the party is now receiving hate calls. “He preyed upon two or three young people,” he alleged. “I removed him. It’s very disturbing.”…

In contrast, says Zarate, the Green Party has very different ideals. “We stand for diversity. We stand for being green as far as our environment. We are a non-violent peaceful group and we advocate for all sorts of ideals and we are pro feminism but the one thing we are not, we are not about violent acts. We are definitely against those things,” said Zarate…

He said Jimenez was “just another member,” and not a leader, adding that the Green Party has 50,000 or so members in Texas. It bothered Zarate also that the person attacked in the video was a youth. “It doesn’t matter what the hat says. It’s just a hat. People wear shirts we find offensive, and we don’t like it, but we definitely don’t attack some young kid. By the looks of it they were just teenagers,” said Zarate, who added, “If he wants to take a hat off an adult go ahead and try, but the results will be a little different.”…https://heavy.com/news/2018/07/kino-jimenez-ahuitzotl-green-party-whataburger/

5 Jul: Daily Caller: Tim Pearce: Pruitt Has Been Gone For Less Than A Day And His Replacement Is Already Getting Attacked
The preliminary attacks have come chiefly from environmental organizations, liberal news outlets and journalists. The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) tweeted a blog post written after the Senate confirmed Wheeler in April on why Americans should be “afraid of him.”
“Make no mistake: we’ll fight Wheeler’s pollution agenda with the same vigor as we did Pruitt’s,” NRDC tweeted.

Mary Ann Hitt, director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, celebrated Pruitt’s resignation while reminding Wheeler that the environmental group has “our eye on him.”

TWEET: Mary Ann Hitt: Y’ALL WE BOOTED PRUITT! That small-time grifter is headed back to OK in a cloud of smog and coal ash thanks to Y’ALL who refused to let him pollute our country & our democracy! #Coal lobbyist Andrew Wheeler is next in line at EPA and you’d better believe we’ve got our eye on him.

Journalists from liberal-leaning news outlets tweeted out other stories and warnings of Wheeler’s embrace of Trump’s deregulatory agenda…TWEETS

Thanks Pat,
And thanks for including his resignation letter. Do you think it may be significant that the sentence ” However, the unrelenting attacks on me personally, my family, are unprecedented and have taken a sizable toll on all of us…” was not included by either ABC or SMH in their reports?
Cheers,
Dave B

Oz needs to decide what nation they wish to be and what values they hold dear enough to require of the leadership.

It isn’t about solar panels and windmills alone. Those are outward signs of larger issues.

When did unelected transnational bureaucrats gain the authority to undermine the history, heritage, economy, security, and future of AU because of some crap brained politicians greed and incompetence?

The true decision that Oz must make is about long term survival and how that will occur.

The present course of action, and the actors therein, are not a viable solution.

A Bushman knows more about cultural survival than the leadership of Oz at present. At least Bushmen hold their heritage and tribe in high respect.

I’m not judging anyone. I’m observing the elements required for the survival of a civilization and how those can be lost.

Aussies are tough people, from a tough and spirited heritage. I should like to think they still are.

Time to end the reign of charlatans and demagogues.

Oz needs a bit more Nigel Farage/Tony Abbott, and a bit less Malcolm Turnbull. To do that, AU must decide its values, heritage, history, and future, then ask who will preserve them all. Not who will sell out their collective future to failed ideologies for the price of present day adoration about unproven things. Au needs to look in a mirror and ask what is seen that is real. A good bit of leadership, at present, is nonsense and not helpful. Demand better. Require it. Or throw the bums out. IMHO.

Sorry but Australians have already decided on where they place their values and priorities – onto one or the other major parties to continue the march over the cliff chasing the invisible and imaginary CO2 monster. The only way the people will wake up and realise there is no such monster is to see a real one – economic crash and burn.

I have read about a proposal to dig a channel from the Spencer gulf to fill Lake Eyre with sea water. The idea was to increase rain across NSW and Queensland by increased evaporation. The BOM say it would not work because of the prevailing high pressure systems across the region, which I agree with.

We think of Lake Eyre as a useless salt pan, but if the water level was kept up we would have a fresh water lake.

‘When recently flooded the lake is almost fresh and native freshwater fish, including bony bream (Nematolosa erebi), the Lake Eyre Basin sub-species of golden perch (Macquaria ambigua) and various small hardyhead species (Craterocephalus spp.) can survive in it.’ wiki

‘…35,000 years ago Lake Dieri (or the ancestral Lake Eyre) was 3 times the size of the present Lake Eyre and had a depth of at least 17 m. At that time, lush vegetation surrounded the lake.

‘From 20,000 years on the climate changed so much that the rivers that fed the lakes diminished and then stopped flowing, apart from the occasional flood, and the area became as arid as it is today, the lakes shrinking until only salt lakes remained. Most of the salt delivered to the lakes was leached from the ancient marine sediments that underlie the catchment.’

5 Jul: AmericanThinker: Summer Causes Climate Change Hysteria
By Roy W. Spencer
Summers in the U.S. are hot. They always have been. Some are hotter than others.
Speaking as a Ph.D. meteorologist with 40 years’ experience, this week’s heat wave is nothing special.

But judging from the memo released on June 22 by Public Citizen (a $17 million per year liberal/progressive consumer rights advocacy group originally formed by Ralph Nader in 1971 and heavily funded by Leftwing billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundations), every heat wave must now be viewed as a reminder of human-caused climate change. The memo opines that (believe it or not) the news media have not been very good about linking weather events to climate change, which is leading to complacency among the public…

DATA

Finally, the Public Citizen memo claims that today’s technology would already allow 80% to 100% of our energy to come from renewable sources. This is patently false. Solar and wind are relatively diffuse (and thus expensive) sources of energy which are intermittent, requiring fossil fuel (or nuclear) backup. It would be exceedingly expensive to get even 50% of our energy from such sources. Maybe someday we will have such technologies, but until that day arrives, the massive amount of money that would be required to achieve such a goal would worsen poverty, which historically has been the leading cause of premature death in the world.https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/07/summer_causes_climate_change_hysteria.html

The memo opines that (believe it or not) the news media have not been very good about linking weather events to climate change, which is leading to complacency among the public…

One reason that the media is not very successful at pushing the weather/climate change message is that we all learned “Said Hanrahan” at school. But the kids these days probably don’t learn that anymore.

They are still doing it? I read similar articles some 15 years ago where temperature readings were regularly taken at airport runways and car parks near air-cons. Why don’t they just place their thermometers indoors behind refrigerators? It would save them a lot of money and effort. Blatant dishonesty.

John Watt
July 5, 2018 at 3:55 pm · Reply
“How do we get the message to our “leaders”? Surely they aren’t all intellectually gutless? Reading Nicol ,Evans, Curry and Svensmark is not going to hurt! Meanwhile we are being led down a “feel good” path to economic oblivion by a gaggle of green delusionists. Very democratic!”

280
#
Peter C
July 5, 2018 at 4:11 pm · Reply
“Supporting this blog with a donation is one way.

Jo keeps putting up the stories and people are reading them. If Jo stops doing that then no one will know what’s happening and why.”

Jo, why do you not show your readers the actual data of the NOAA US Climate Reference Network project which demonstrates the GHGs are not the cause of record high temperatures (2013)at Mercury NV USA???

Science not settled, yet still we indulge windfarms
The Australian · 14 hours ago
Australia’s emissions reduction policies are in response to what has always been an ideologically charged, fashionable flight of fancy, writes Maurice Newman…
—

bits and pieces:

5 Jul: CarbonPulse: Colombia’s ETS planning to take at least 3 years -official
Colombia will spend at least three years studying ways to impose an ETS in the country, a government official told Carbon Pulse on Thursday, dimming prospects of a rapid launch of emissions trading following lawmaker clearance last week.

5 Jul: CarbonPulse: Ex-BP environmental head sets up US firm to trade biofuels, forest carbon
The former head of environmental products trading at oil major BP has left to set up a US-based firm specialising in biofuels and forest carbon assets.

5 Jul: CarbonPulse: RBS fraud lawsuit: Former Barclays traders at odds over market awareness of 2009 EU ETS fraud
Two former Barclays trading colleagues called upon as market experts have effectively been pitted against each other in a £160 million ($210 mln) lawsuit over RBS’s alleged 2009 role in EU carbon trading tax fraud.

I believe there is only one way out of this undemocratic UniParty nightmare we are in: the LNP needs to be utterly obliterated at the next election.
At present we have no real choice about our energy policy, except that we can reach a Venezuelean standard of social and economic life a little faster with Labor than the LNP – but both will take us there eventually. If the LNP is crushed at the next election there is a chance that conservative forces within the party might move it back to its base. But if there are only a few seats separating both parties after the election there will be no incentive for them to change, and we will be stuck for ever with this game of “vote for us because we will hurt you, your family and your country just a tiny weeny bit less than the opposition.”

5 Jul: UK Independent: World’s poorest people bearing costs of rainforest conservation that benefits entire world, scientists warn
by Josh Gabbatiss
‘Instead of you and me having to fly less, and drive less, and people in cities around the world having to live their western lifestyles less – it’s poor people in far away places having to change their livelihoods’
Richer nations are “freeloading” off some of the poorest communities in the world by forcing them to foot the bill for rainforest conservation, according to a new study…
Crucially, despite clear commitments by the likes of the World Bank to compensate those harmed by these programmes, such compensation is not taking place…

“Beyond the economic costs of not being able to grow food to feed their family, local people suffer from conservation enforcement,” said Dr Rakotonarivo.
“I have heard firsthand reports of people being arrested and held in deplorable conditions for cultivating on forest fallow which they consider ancestral land. In a country where jail conditions are inhumane, this shows how desperate people are.”…

However, Professor Jones said while it is easy to lay the blame on the Malagasy government, the real problem is that the rich world is “essentially freeloading on extremely poor forest residents”.
“Britain has made quite a large commitment through the green climate fund to fund these kind of Redd+ activities,” she said.
“But as a global community we are nowhere near paying enough for these issues so ultimately it’s about having a carbon tax or something that would raise the price of carbon and means there was more money on the table.”https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/madagascar-rainforest-conservation-poor-people-climate-change-deforestation-un-a8432961.html

5 Jul: EurekaAlert: Some of the world’s poorest people are bearing the costs of tropical forest conservation
Global conservation targets should not be met at the cost of the world’s poor; the first study to evaluate a policy aiming to compensate local people for the costs of conservation has revealed that, despite good intentions, the poor have lost out
Multilateral donors such as the World Bank have made clear commitments that those negatively impacted by their projects should be compensated. This includes those affected by conservation projects such as those intended to slow climate change by preventing tropical deforestation (a scheme known as REDD+ or Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation). Researchers have, for the first time, studied one such compensation scheme in depth and revealed it to be inadequate.

The researchers from Bangor University in the UK and the University of Antananarivo in Madagascar looked at a new protected area and REDD+ pilot project in the eastern rainforests of Madagascar called the Coridor Ankeniheny Zahamena (or CAZ).

In their paper, peer-reviewed and published in PeerJ – the Journal of Life & Environmental Sciences, the researchers show that the new conservation restrictions bring very significant costs to local people (representing up to 85% of local annual incomes). Compensation, in the form of help with improved agriculture, was offered to a small subset of people but none were fully compensated…https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-07/p-sot062918.php

5 Jul: UNDP: Remarks at Africa-China Sustainable Cooperation on Economic Structural Transformation, Towards 2030 Agenda
Portrait of Tegegnework Gettu
by Tegegnework Gettu, UNDP Associate Administrator
According to a recent KPMG report, 93 percent of the world’s 250 largest companies in terms of revenue are now reporting on sustainability. Impact investors, who have the intention to generate environmental, social and governance impacts alongside financial returns, hold assets under management of around $22 billion.

However, more is needed to ensure that the global financial system channels savings towards investments in areas in need for the SDGs, including investing in sustainable and resilient infrastructure. For example, international institutional investors with longer-term liabilities hold around $80 trillion, which is a significant potential source of finance for sustainable development. Yet, for instance, the largest pension funds invest only 3 percent of their global assets in infrastructure, and even a lower percent in African countries. Investment in sustainable development requires long-term investing that price longer-term risks, such as those associated with climate change…

5 Jul: Bloomberg: UN’s Green Climate Fund at ‘Low Point’ After Director Resigns
By Jess Shankleman
The head of the Green Climate Fund, set up by the United Nations in the fight against global warming, stepped down abruptly after less than two years on the job, leaving the organization’s future in doubt.

Howard Bamsey, an Australian diplomat who served as the GCF’s executive director since January 2017, resigned after a “difficult” meeting in which no new projects were approved, according to a statement released after the gathering in Songdo, South Korea…

“Everyone said this is the low point,” said Jasmine Hyman, an environmental consultant at the British firm E Co. who attended the meeting. “This was a disappointing meeting but hopefully it’s a canary in the mine and not a nail in the coffin.”…

5 Jul: AmericanThinker: UN’s ‘Green Climate Fund’ boondoggle falling apart thanks to President Trump
By Thomas Lifson
Like so many other global warmist gatherings of well paid officials in luxurious and exotic locales, this one was supposed to share the joy of distributing other people’s money and being praised for it. But President Trump turned off the spigot from the United States Treasury, and nobody else was willing to step up and replace the American cash with his own…

Megan Darby reports in Climate Change News:

(excerpt) As well as the US withholding $2bn of its pledge, the pot has lost some $1bn in value due to exchange rate fluctuations since 2014, officials reported.

That “exchange rate” loss strikes me as highly suspicious. How does one lose that much without risky speculation? The entire commitments to date, according to Bloomberg, have been only $3.7 billion. Were the funds invested in Iranian rials? Could a U.N. agency possibly be corrupt? Perish the thought!…

If one wants to really help the developing world, the focus ought to be on affordable energy production, not on fighting carbon dioxide emissions, an entirely theoretical danger, and one with many benefits (faster crop growth with less fertilizer, for instance). Green power is expensive power, and poor countries need more energy to raise their standards of living…

Today I received a letter from my local council encouraging me to sign up to their scheme to install solar panels on my roof.
The letter says that my council is in league with hundreds of councils all over Australia in this scheme. Apparently, by installing these panels I will be saving the planet, or something.
In the fine print, it says that actually this is a scam to get me to borrow money to pay for the panels “at reduced interest rates”, which will be paid off by the savings I will make in electricity payments.
Then, in even smaller print, it says that by installing these panels, I will be expected to save $100 per year on my electricity bill.
Where do I rush out to sign up?

I heard a similar comment made by a staff member at Coles who was berated by a customer over the plastic bag issue. The staff member yelled out the reason they stopped them is to save the environment. Typical of so many Australian who are fooled into believing that BS. The madness and gullibility over emissions, renewables, etc. has gone too far to turn back. Even someone like Trump would have an impossible task. For starters such a person would have no hope of being elected due to the mass delusion. Only a major economic shock will bring people to the senses. If you really want to sign up for anything useful albeit futile do this: https://www.joincory.com/paris_agreement

Turnbull, Bishop and Frydenberg committed to reducing the nations CO2 emissions by 26% -28% of the 2005 levels, when the population was 20 million, by 2030 when the population on current trends will be around 32 million.
To get a handle on what this means have a look at this, particularly fig 4.
Did those three realise what that commitment meant, did they actually read what they were signing?
All three have law degrees.

I am appalled at the recent stupid revival of a calim made about twenty years ago that methane from sheep and cattle (goats) “contributed to Australia’s green house gas emissions. No one but a brainless geographer (of which there are thirty in the ARC Climate Unit at UNSW!) would even think of it.

The SCIENTIFIC FACTA ARE that the methane produced by ruminants contains only carbon that was sequestered from the atmosphere the year before. If ethanol in our fuel reduces our carbon dioxide output by reducing the use of petrol – a doubtful argument anyway – then the burps from cattle will NOT increase our carbon output. Most of the methane comes from grass with very little diesel or other fuel inputs. Ethanol comes only from grain with significant petrol and diesel being used in its production.

Methane then breaks down into carbon dioxide and water so that it is nearly all gone in forty or fifty years time. Methane from cattle in 1950 is by now removed from the atmosphere while new methane simply REPLCES IT in 2018. There is absolutely no way that reducing our livestock numbers will reduce our greenhouse gases in ANY WAY.

The grains required for ethanol require massive amounts of fertilizers which are fossil fuel derivatives and require fossil fuel machinery to deliver. To get these grains from field to pump, massive amounts of fossil fuels are required – transport from field to depot, to refinery for processing, from refinery to pump. Pumping this fuel requires the same amount of electricity as pumping fossil fuel.

Here’s a link to how the refining is done (conversion, as refining sounds the crude oil process which converts rude into usable products) https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.3155/1047-3289.60.9.1118 – it seems that a lot of potential emissions are being left out of the green literature just on the processing end, and little to nothing on the environmental impacts such using good crop land for fuel grain production and the massive amounts of chemical fertilizers. (The process may sound a lot like they are artificially digesting the plant material; that is actually what they are doing.)

The people, more than politicians, are to blame for the damage being done by climate change policies. Sufficient people believe the warming hypothesis to support action by governments. Only in jurisdictions where the economic damage has been substantial have the voters elected a government to reverse climate change policies (Canada’s Ontario being the prime recent example). Australia has a long way to go before voters will judge the cost/benefit imbalance to be intolerable. The Club of Rome resource depletion forecasts 40 years ago created a level of public alarm comparable to that engendered by the current fears of runaway global warming, albeit government interventions were not as draconian as those incited by the warming fantasy. It took decades for the Rome forecasts to be proven nonsense. A similar waiting period is probably needed before the warming theory abates. About 2040 should do it. In the meantime, like Tom Quike’s cows, those of us enduring the material increases in electricity prices and the hysterical ‘we’re all doomed’ fulminations about global warming, will have to keep offering up abrupt enteric emissions.

Regardless of whether rising or falling Co2 is leading to anything the fear mongers of this world have a serious issue.

What’s causing the increase?

Cow farts … irrelevant
Volcanoes … yeah a bit more serious
The biggest emitter of Co2 is … the soil
Yup
The earth beneath our feet, well those of us who walk on that and not concrete, is the largest emitter of Co2.

All the windmills and solar panels are even more irrelevant than we think.

As the soil is the largest emitter it is also the largest sequester of Co2 as well.
We know Co2 is plant food … and rangeland grazing of pastures is one of the largest sequesters of Co2.
But those having their green dream, who rage against animals and agriculture don’t care.

55% natural uptake of 36 Gt global emissions = 19.7 Gt. Assuming all nations are credited for a share of oceanic uptake proportional to their land area, Australia’s share of natural uptake = 1.0 Gt. Considering uptake by land area alone, Australia’s share of natural uptake is still 0.54 Gt.

(Note: A study published in Science several years ago on CO2 uptake by soil in desert areas found uptake comparable to moderately vegetated areas. The mechanism is unknown.)

No matter how you figure it, Australia is a net CO2 sink. This is also affirmed in global CO2 monitoring by the Japanese Ibuki satellite. The high per capita emissions for Australia is a red herring. Australia is in fact the only advanced economy that is a CO2 sink. We are absorbing emissions from other nations and should be receiving an emissions credit. Obsessing over our emissions and saddling ourselves with the highest electricity prices in the world is beyond stupid.

As for the methane emissions by livestock, it derives from the digestion of cellulose. The Australian landscape is dotted with termite mounds each of which is also a methane generator utilising the same plant material. What the livestock does not eat the termites will consume with the same production of methane. Removing all of the sheep and cattle would have no effect on methane production.